Although many novel approaches to exploring complex data sets exist, little guidance is available for novice designers and developers to start creating new solutions for specific use cases. The construction kit for visual exploration interfaces models the problem domain of product search. The building blocks define a design space, which describes all possible designs that can be created by combining these blocks.
The construction kit contains several building blocks that can be assigned to different dimensions of visual exploration interfaces. These building blocks can be combined to a pattern, which describes one part of a visual search interface. These patterns can be composed in a construction plan that enables the description of complex search interfaces. The construction process is supported by three different connectors: Successive (patterns are shown successively), Juxtaposed (patterns are shown next to each other), and Superimposed (patterns are combined with each other in one view).
The construction kit can be also used as workshop method and can be applied in two directions: bottom-up to develop novel visual interfaces and top-down to identify and analyze key aspects of existing interface solutions.
Course Material
Elements of the Construction Kit and Examples
-
- Building blocks of the Construction Kit
-
- well-known visualization techniques can be created by the combination of different building blocks
-
- Variation of patterns through substitution of building blocks
-
- Connectors of the Construction Kit
-
- Example of a Hotel Search Interface on Kayak.com
-
- Construction Plan for the hotel search interface on kayak.com
-
- A Design Pattern for the Map-based Search Pattern
-
- Construction Plan for a hotel search interface based on Parallel Sets
Workshop Material and Results
-
- Worksheets for morpholigcal analysis and building blocks as stickers
-
- created pattern and inspiration card
-
- Morphological Analysis task
-
- creation of interface concepts using created patterns and inspiration cards
-
- Worksheet for first morphological analysis
-
- worksheet for second morphological analysis
-
- worksheet for pattern creation
-
- Patterns that were created in the workshop
-
- Inspiration Cards
-
- Interface concepts and construction plans